Dictionary of Literary Biography on Gary (Sherman) Snyder

Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco, California. He has married three times, the first two marriages ending in divorce. In 1950 he married Alison Gass and was divorced in 1951; in 1960 he married Joanne Kyger and was divorced in 1964. His third marriage, to Japanese-born Masa Uehara, has produced two children: Kai and Gen. In 1951 Snyder received a B.A. in anthropology and literature from Reed College and began graduate work at Indiana University. From 1953 to 1956 he studied Oriental languages at the University of California, Berkeley. Perhaps the most interesting feature of his education, and certainly the most relevant to his poetry, is the time he spent studying Zen Buddhism in Japan. He began in 1956 on a scholarship from the First Zen Institute of America and, after numerous interruptions, completed his studies in 1968. In addition to his carrier as a poet and a student of Zen, Snyder has spent...